Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez & the Cultural Revolution

While the government shutdown continues over what is a reasonable expenditure of $5.6 or 5.7 billion for a border wall of some sort, (if not a reasonable cost per mile of construction), we have on the other hand the evolving fantasies of the progressive left.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has now delivered two grand plans:

1. Medicare for all which has been estimated to cost over $30 trillion over a decade.

2. The Green New Deal which purports to do in 5 or 6 congressional terms what has been deemed impossible in 32 years (by 2050) by Green supporters like Vox's David Roberts, as pointed out by the pseudonymous, efficient yet wonky Warren Henry in his column at The Federalist.

When her fawning interviewers point out the difficulty of the math of her proposals she responds, "The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments, new public banks can be created (as in WWII) to extend credit and a combination of various taxation tools (including taxes on carbon and other emissions and progressive wealth taxes) can be employed."

In Ocasio Cortez's view this is a moral not a fiscal problem. The internal combustion engine that runs on carbon-based fuels is evil. Al Gore played with that idea in his attack on the car a couple of decades ago as he promoted the information superhighway, thus establishing the facile fallacy that tech is somehow green because your laptop doesn't directly belch emissions.

We know it isn't true.

For example, one of bitcoin's biggest weaknesses is the amount of power it consumes using a distributed ledger to validate transactions, rather than a trusted central authority. Unlike Visa and MasterCard and those evil oligopolists that pay you back after the (relatively rare) cases of fraud. While the gas-guzzling (as in utilities) bitcoin is a case where when kid hackers (or more likely state hackers like the North Koreans) steal your bitcoins, they're gone forever. No real transactional security and terribly energy-inefficient but hey, it's crypto and it's cool!

But somehow the Unicorn dream of green tech lives on, rather than a (forgive me for such outdated language) sensible cost-benefit analysis of any proposal which is so old white male.

But it's more than an adolescent disregard of the economics of limited resources in the glaring spectacle of ever higher processing power and complex algorithms. It's something a little more frightening because - unlike algorithms where you either get it right or you don't (I'm learning coding with my young son at Blockly and believe me you're either right or usually wrong) - this aspect is moral.

That is it's despicable tactic dressed up as ideological purity - two very frightening words in and of themselves.

After the failure of his Great Leap Forward in the late 50's and early 60's, and the sudden vulnerability of his leadership of Communist China, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966 and unleashed the sickening cruelty of children and adolescents on their elders and parents. It worked. His opponents were humiliated, tortured, banished or sometimes executed, and a reign of petty terror was unleashed that destroyed much of China's intellectual and cultural capital.

It seems she's playing with fire and her elders in the Democratic Party damn well know it. The media is often too lazy and too coddling of her to point out the fanaticism of her proposals, beyond a few gentle nudges towards reality. But if she were allowed to enact even a modest portion of her policy proposals, the harm done to America would be considerable and perhaps immense.

We are dealing, thank God, with America and not China, however. And Ocasio-Cortez's juvenile radicalism will be contained by the same ties that - however frayed - bind and contain some of Trump's far less toxic proposals - like using executive authority to build a border wall.

And meanwhile innovation will continue to produce changes - some of them substantial - and emissions will continue to fall. Per dollar of GDP that is - there's, as always, a trade-off. Just ask Nancy Pelosi and her $120-million dollar portfolio.

I wasn’t aware that AOC had become the ruler of the universe, and most of us don’t understand why the reich wing is obsessing over her. The 70% rate she proposed is far too low. It should be in the 90s, with a 100% inheritance tax not only for the top income bracket but for every government employee at all levels including Nancy Pelosi. Oligarchy was bad enough, but the Kakistocracy has to end. The Traitor gets his orders from Putain, Erdogan, Netanyahu and other middle eastern potentates while ignoring our interests and participating in innumerable criminal schemes. Any wall-nut stupid enough to believe in “the wall” is too ignorant to participate in any discussion anywhere.

I’m sure this article will be soiled within a few minutes by the usual suspect. Those posts are incompatible with modern devices and should all be deleted NOW! I offered $5 to shut down the site but that valuation is dropping daily. I will pay $4 to get control of the template for the site, to modernize it, or give you $3 to shut down the site. Seriously, why would anyone want to bother having to look at the mess the “residents” here have made while waiting for their jello.

ohrealy wrote: The 70% rate she proposed is far too low. It should be in the 90s, with a 100% inheritance tax …

Sounds like Ohrealy is riding in the wagon, and barely (if ever) helping to push the wagon.

ohrealy wrote: Any wall-nut stupid enough to believe in “the wall” is too ignorant to participate in any discussion anywhere.

But ignorance hasn’t stopped ohrealy from often being the 1st to comment on Keeley’s articles (despite ohrealy claiming the articles are so bad, the site should be closed down). IF it is so bad, why is ohrealy almost always the 1st to comment on Keeley’s articles?

ohrealy wrote: Those posts are incompatible with modern devices and should all be deleted NOW!

What sort of “modern” device are you referring to?Is your scrolling finger getting tired?Everything looks fine on my SmartPhones and all tablet/notebook computers with different browsers (i.e. scroll; jump to top; jump to bottom; search/find ; zoom in; zoom out; etc.). Perhaps you only need to learn how to use your “modern” devices efficiently?

ohrealy wrote: I’m sure this article will be soiled within a few minutes by the usual suspect.

AOC is going to get a political “spanking” soon from her Democrat peers. She is woefully ignorant about nearly everything political. That she can breathe and talk with such minuscule brainpower is miraculous.

I think the main problem is that AOC is young (age 29), and she thinks she knows everything. So, perhaps she decided to get out there, run for Congress, and conquer the world, while she still knows everything.It’s hard to be humble when you already know everything.AOC said there is “no question” that Trump is a racist.

“I think the main problem is that AOC is young (age 29), and she thinks she knows everything.
So, perhaps she decided to get out there, run for Congress, and conquer the world, while she still knows everything.
It’s hard to be humble when you already know everything.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) said that the rich should pay 70% (or more) on their income. AOC also said the wealthy should pay more taxes.

It is not enough for AOC that the wealthy are ALREADY paying more (based on Personal Income Tax rates) since, based on the upper tax bracket of 37% (see below), a person making 10,000,000 will pay 10 times more in taxes than a person who makes $1,000,000 (i.e. 10 times less).

PERSONAL TAXES:

2017 ____ 2019-to-2025___single____________married

10% _____ 10%________ $0-$9,525 _________$0-$19,050

15% _____ 12%________ $9,525-$38,700_____$19,050-$77,400

25% _____ 22%________ $38,700-$82,500____$77,400-$165,000

28% _____ 24%________ $82,500-$157,500___$165,000-$315,000

33% _____ 32%________ $157,500-$200,000__$315,000-$400,000

33%-35% _ 35%________ $200,000-$500,000__$400,000-$600,000

39.6% ____ 37%________ $500,000+ _________$600,000+

The part of the tax code that is not fair, in which different types of income are taxed differently, is that the personal tax rates are higher thatn the 15%-to-20% capital gains tax rates (especially after adding social security and medicare tax rates to the personal income tax rates).

* This rate was reduced one-half percentage point for 2001 and one-half percentage point for 2002 and beyond.
** There was a two percentage point reduction for capital gains from certain assets held for more than five years, resulting in 8% and 18% rates.
*** The gain may also be subject to the 3.8% Medicare tax.

The unfairness is that most people don’t have much (if any) capital gains income.

Hence, a person making with $1,000,000 in capital gains is paying 20% in federal taxes, but a person making $82,500-to-$157,500 in wages is paying 28% federal income tax + 6.2% Social Security Tax (on first $128.400) + 1.45% Medicare Tax, which is 35.65% on the gross wages (and that does not include the matching by the employer, who also pays 6.2% Social Security Tax + 1.45%) Medicare Tax).

IF you think a flat percentage is a fair tax system (i.e. 20%, or less sounds good), the how is it fair (in the example above) when the person making 6.3-to-12.1 times less per year is paying 35.65% in taxes on wages, and the person making $1,000,000 is paying 20.0% in taxes on capital gains?

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Posted by: Arvind kumar at February 11, 2019 2:29 AM

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